Dr. Warren Riess: The Ship That Held Up Wall Street

In 1982, more than 11,000 New Yorkers saw archeologists at work on an excavation project at 175 Water Street, just blocks from the heart of New York’s Financial District. Then it was all gone. What would an underwater archeologist find beneath the pavement of Lower Manhattan? The remains of a colonial merchant ship.

Dr. Warren Riess, who co-directed the excavation, will discuss the endeavor and the results of thirty-five years of research that led him to identify the ship and discover its history. His investigations have answered important questions about colonial ship design, the merchant trade, and the development of early New York, Charleston, and Virginia. His book about the project, The Ship That Held Up Wall Street, was published in 2014.